


i'd rather be me than be with you (but i miss you more than a little)

by goandneverlookback



Series: i'd rather be me than be with you (but i miss you more than a little) [1]
Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: Angst, F/M, Freddie drinks a lot, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post canon, florence is sad and lonely and reminiscing, or at least used to, similar headcanons to my other chess fics, what might have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goandneverlookback/pseuds/goandneverlookback
Summary: Florence reminisces on what is, what was, and what might have been**title in part from Mean Girls





	i'd rather be me than be with you (but i miss you more than a little)

            The glare of the TV flickers, the singular light source in the small apartment. She sits on the couch facing the TV, dark shadows beneath her eyes mimicking those dancing on the walls. The nightly news, reporting about the States, Europe, Asia…Global Television. There he is, white suit and all. And he looks good. His smile comes easier now. His eyes don’t look haunted with the consuming thought of his next drink. And she wonders. What would it have been if she had stayed? Where would they be? What would they have been? The clock chimes midnight and she is awake, watching the news, drinking tea and wishing it was something stronger and remembering why she vowed to never turn to the bottle. The mug is empty. Her hand shakes as she sets it on the side table. In the morning things will be okay again, and the apartment will feel once more like the home she has made it to be. But right now…the walls are closing in with loneliness and thoughts of what might have been. It was all wonderful, in the beginning. He was a friend, when she had long since had any. And they had fallen in love, through the challenges and the trials and the baggage they both brought with them. And they had both loved the game. But the pressure he put on himself to be the best was too much, and he turned to other ways to cope. It wasn’t that they had fallen out of love, but that their love had been lost as he had sought solace in the bottom of a bottle, or two, or five, and she had been once again left alone, to hold all the pieces together. And hold the pieces together she did, to the best of her abilities, until the cracks began to show and people began to notice that not everything was as it seemed. And then there he was: someone new. And not just anyone new, the competition. He was tall and dark and beautiful and looked at her like she was someone worthwhile. But she couldn’t. Could she? They had come so far together for her to leave him while he was like this. Until the piercing words turned into fists and she knew she couldn’t stay, she couldn’t stay, and where else could she turn? But loving a stranger is ill advice, and after months of a safe haven, almost a bliss, there is a wife, who he has been married to for years, with whom he has had children. And she feels inside she is nothing but a home wrecker. She is a mistress. She is who she had despised. She had never been married but the way he had looked at other girls with her standing right next to her, sipping her water as he tossed back another shot…she has dug the same knife in someone else’s chest, a hundredfold. And in a twist of fate, the four of them are together, and he must choose between wife and mistress and she must choose between the one with his sins in the open and who promises that he loves her, that he’s changed, that things will all be different this time around, or the one with his sins hidden behind a heavy curtain, whose words are few but whose actions had begun to put together all of the broken pieces she had fallen into. And so she went home alone, head held high. For a while, that is. And then it’s that time of year again. And one is returning to defend his title as world champion and one is returning to broadcast the game to the world and she is sitting at home, working day in and day out to distract herself from losing what she had lived for, from losing the passion she gave to everything she did. Because when no one knows you can and have repeatedly beat the current world chess champion, what is waiting tables and serving drinks in a run down town at a coffee shop - diner – bar because they host the singular chess club in the area. _Go where nobody knows your name,_ she had told herself. And that is exactly what she did. Not that it was hard, by any means. She ran away from them, from both of them. And to be honest, she ran from herself as well.

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Sup y'all I haven't written in actually forever  
> \+ I have like three fics I want to write with this same title but who knows if they'll ever actually make it out of this jumbled mess i call a brain  
> \+ y'all are wonderful and I appreciate you so much


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